Cold
by Snowlia
Summary: We’re losing what makes us human, losing our hold on the one evil that Pandora failed to release. Our blood is running colder everyday and our hearts are sealing over.


A/N: Nightschool equals new obsession for Snowlia! I usually don't like mangas but I do actually enjoy this one, a LOT. Especially Cassidy, my _man_. Anyway here is a small one-shot that was the unforeseen product of an original failed attempt at a Nightschool slash I am working on. This is from Cassidy's POV, I hope you enjoy.

"Man dies of cold, not of darkness." ~ Miguel de Unamuno

The night is not typically known for its warmth.

Spending most of my days asleep or in training and my nights prowling the streets of the city I've become accustomed to the familiar chill of the air. The summer is too hot when goose bumps don't line my arms and the winter's going weak if I don't feel the harsh bite of numbness digging into my skin. The night is a cold place; it leaves shards of ice in the heart and a glint of steel in the eyes of the creatures that lurk in the shadows between the moonbeams.

My team and I, we're the warmest things out here, for now. Teacher, he just seems to blend in with the rest of the creatures of the night sometimes, like he's lost that human warmth living so close to them. I don't know if the others notice it, if they see how much colder we are all slowly getting day by day. When we started we were all so different, ready to go and eager to please. We hadn't seen anything, not the way moonlight glints off of fresh blood, nor the look of cold calculation that comes across a witch's face just before she delivers a curse, nor the way a body stills when the last trace of life disappears from its graying eyes. We hadn't heard the way a werewolf snarls as it hunts, hadn't tasted our own blood on our tongue in battle, hadn't felt a bone break under our hands or smelled the rotting stench of death.

Now we had.

We still retained some of our human hearts, I knew. The way Ten laughed at something Marina said, the way Teresa smiled after she teased me, the way Joq and J could fight for hours with no real anger behind it. It was still there, though it was fading. Could it have been that a year ago Ten was laughing a little harder, Teresa smiling a bit more often and Joq and J not looking so bitter?

It's happening so slowly, I don't think they notice. We're all losing what makes us human, what makes us want to go be out in the sun for no apparent reason, what makes us want to do just anything for no apparent reason.

I think I'm losing it too. For a while I thought that things were just getting worse, that the job of hunter was slowly getting more demanding as more calls came in. Now I don't think that's what's going on. Hunting is the exact same as it has always been; I'm just seeing more of it. The death and pain that lives in the Night World has ceased to be a sad story. I'm no longer watching and helping from third person point of view. This is my world now. This is my death and my pain.

Teacher sees it. I know he does.

Sometimes, only occasionally, I'll see him looking at us and I think he wishes that this wasn't our lives. That we were normal kids, not surrounded by darkness, shadows and blood. Could I ever do that? Could I be like him, taking on seven innocent kids and train them and watch them grow up and lose their innocence, their optimism and their hope? Could I watch them turn as cold as the world around them and lose that special spark that makes them human?

Because that's what's happening here. We're losing what makes us human, losing our hold on the one evil that Pandora failed to release. Our blood is running colder everyday and our hearts are sealing over.

It's scaring me.

It shouldn't though; it can't. This is part of the job. All along I knew what would happen. I had seen adult hunters and knew what they were like. I guess I had just never understood what that glimpse into the future meant.

Teacher knows I'm afraid, I think. He has this special look he gives me sometime, usually right after he gives the others that slightly remorseful frown when their backs are turned. For only a moment I feel like I'm as old as him. Like I'm his friend and we have some unspoken remembrance of hard times that haven't happened yet, but will. In that one moment we're not student and teacher. We're comrades in a battle that will never end. Sometimes I think maybe that's why Teacher always leaves me in charge. It's why I'm going to be the one to take over his spot when he's had enough, because I get it. I see what's happening.

I don't want to lose what makes me human. I don't want that little kid who was so excited to go out and fight for the right thing to die because the cold got the better of him. I need that warmth, I can't lose it.

I just can't.

But I'm going to have to.


End file.
